Apple Juice -- Can It Really Help With Wheezing?

Have you seen the news this week? There’s been a lot of coverage in the health news about a new study from the UK that was published in the European Respiratory Journal.

Apparently this study found that drinking apple juice but not eating apples can actually help control wheezing in people who have asthma.

The study looked at 2640 primary school children who were ages 5 to 10 years that lived
in Greenwich, south London. The researchers found that drinking a glass of apple juice every day lessened both the severity and the frequency of wheezing, which is probably the most common asthma symptom.

Researchers think that it’s phytochemicals in apple juice that provides the protection. The specific kind of phytochemical that seems to calm the airway inflammation in asthmatics that can lead to wheezing is called “flavonoids.” Flavonoids are found in many different foods.

However, in this study, the positive results were only obtained by drinking apple juice or (to a lesser extent) eating bananas. No benefit in relation to asthma was gained by eating apples, drinking orange juice, or eating any other kind of fruit.

More study is probably needed to gain more insight into this topic, but I know I’ll be drinking more apple juice in the future. After all, it can’t hurt, right? And if it helps me use my rescue inhaler less often, I think that would be great

Kathi is an experienced consumer health education writer, with a prior career in nursing that spanned more than 30 years — much of it in the field of home health care. Over the past 15 years, she’s been an avid contributor for a number of consumer health websites, specializing in asthma, allergy, and COPD. She writes not only as a healthcare professional, but also as a lifelong sufferer of severe allergies and mild asthma, and as a caregiver for her mother with COPD.